Instagram posts are cool, but … what’s behind?

For starters I wasn’t expecting to be so exhausting to speak in a fresh, new language. 

In the last 3 months before leaving I started Spanish classes on Duolingo. Intensive I might say. Romanian is a half-latin language, therefore Spanish was a little easier to learn than other languages. And my generation grew up watching soap-operas from Latin America 🙂

So you might say that the base was created. 

I landed here, on a continent half-way across the globe, thinking that I will slowly start to talk in Spanish. But my English wasn’t useful at all, so I had to dive-in “en espanol”. 

In the first few days the rush of a new thing kicked in and everything was interesting. But as time passed I realized that it’s quite exhausting to speak in a language that you are still learning :). Why? Because people speak fast, use shortcuts and it’s quite an effort to understand them properly. Plus you might feel the need to mentally vision what you’re saying (for example when someone says a number).

And, as any other work in progress, you get better by practicing and having patience. It takes you out of your comfort zone, but it’s for your best interest. 

Like it was for me to team up with 3 people natively speaking Spanish and to go on a hike 😉. It was a little hard listening to three types of Spanish (from Mexic, Columbia and Chile) at the same time, but I had a great time. Thank you Rachel, Rafael and Francisco – you 🤟.   

One other thing I realized is how good it feels to give yourself a day off. I mean the kind of lying in bed, having tea, mentally revisiting recent experiences and thinking about the future ones.

Living in a fast-paced reality meant that I always felt the need to fill as much as possible my time. Either by doing a lot of stuff or by having a lazy day lost to Netflix binge-watching.

What else is behind the glam of Social Media? 

If technology will ever be able to do this … we are doomed 😶